


In search of the furies

by LethiaAletheiA



Category: Warframe
Genre: 2 smut free., Abduction, Ch 1. Violence, Chapter 1 smut free, Fighting, Humiliation, Impact Play, Interludes 1, Non binary Operator, Npc deaths (not just the poor grineer), Other, Specific tags in the Notes at the top, description of violence, gonna do tags for the chapters then, there will be BDSM in the later chapters
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-11
Updated: 2021-02-04
Packaged: 2021-03-15 12:47:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 17,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28688901
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LethiaAletheiA/pseuds/LethiaAletheiA
Summary: A Tenno is ..well a bit bored with fighting that Grineer scientist. Which does have quite a weird effect on them which they cant really explain. To make their fight a bit more fun, said Tenno decides to talk..All fight and no play make Aidan a bratty Tenno.There might come something good out of it.Or a lot of pain.But who says, that pain isn't exactly what said Tenno wants?But life never is that simple, even if it starts with a seemingly simple fight.
Relationships: Operator/Tyl Regor, Tyl Regor/Tenno
Comments: 4
Kudos: 10





	1. In which a Tenno speaks, but nothing clever

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Tridraconeus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tridraconeus/gifts).



> So, this is my first fic, 
> 
> Chapter names are still WIP and might change once I posted the last chapter. 
> 
> Its all Tridraconeus fault. 
> 
> (And the fact equinox needs so dang much many parts that I started to talk to tyl regor during my fights to not fall asleep) 
> 
> englisch isn't my first language, so please feel free to notify me if I made some awkward mistakes, weird grammatical stuff that makes no sense etc so i can try to fix it.
> 
> The first chapter is just good old violence and some banter, but there will be smut and it will include BDSM stuff..  
> (Atm expl chapt 7, there will be more)  
> I will tag anything at the beginning of the relevant chapter  
> Operator is legal age but not really a mature adult because which child soldier is?  
> But they arent naive and this isnt a first time story.. okay maybe a first time kink story hehe.  
> Hope that makes sense.
> 
> title may be Wip. 
> 
> Also its a stupid joke bc the furies came in existence when Cronos cut Uranus dick off, the blood splattered on the floor and the furies popped up. Then Kronos threw poor Uranus junk into the sea, from the foam Aphrodite formed.

"Aren't you, like bored?”.. 

That was the first time that Tyl Regor, scientists and likely the only grineer versed in molecular genetics, heard the tin-frame speak.

The tin frames in of itself weren't unusual. They'd been a very constant annoyance, not unlike the washing service losing his custom made pants, the twin queens asking things they weren't educated enough to fully understand nor trusting enough to not ask  
or idiot grunts not wearing new gloves when they entered the secured labs in their rotations no matter how often he had reminded them in the bulletins. 

Tenno mucking about in his complex were like that.  
Intrusive. Annoying. Destructive.

Regor had fallen into a sort of uneasy routine with the mercenaries who first waltzed into his lab, led on by Alad V, a disgusting weakened shadow of a people's purpose, snivveling and always sending others to do his dirty work.

The one congratulatory thing Tyl would admit about Alad V; he was a driven man, letting nothing stop himself from his goals.  
No costs, nor morals and after his stint with the technocyte, not even self preservation of his physical form. 

A pity Alad & his puppets used said drive to ruin Regors essential work of repairing the damage that had been done by centuries of cloning, executed by barely knowledgeable dimwits. Led by a paranoid spectre of once great power.  
Oh he knew what they were.  
He was grineer, but he wasnt dumb. He had died. And he'd remember every single time.

The first time was bad enough, but he got used to it very quickly.

The loss of his children, of the knowledge he failed to secureon the other hand?  
it hurt like a fire burning with the hatred of generations.

His children were to be a new beginning. Proof that the Grineer could grow, grow further than the limits imposed by their damaged genetic template, neglect or even intent.

But they, Tenno and that slithering bag of infection Alad V, had to ruin those chances, breaking the hopes for growing over the defect, destruction. More than just bodies thrown at a faceless enemy. 

An enemy that came, destroyed, left. No questions asked, not a chance to explain.  
He wasn't anyone to them but a piece of meat in the way of a payout, who had given up trying to explain after nobody listened but the paranoid elder queen.

He still wanted to justify, to prove.. that they could maybe be more than just bodies to be ground down by the war machine.  
If they could grow over their defect, their sterility, their damaged nerves, their lesions..could heal.. they could become people. Maybe gain self determination...  
Tyl sighed and slightly shook his head. Self determination was a dangerous thought.  
The twin queens were supposed to be the one purpose of the Grineer, the leading minds, wisdom beyond the silly empty minds of the grunts..

But he was proof that this dogma, this central tenet of the Grineer was wrong.  
Because his children were overcoming the telomeric damage, the genetic decay, were able to identify neural defect earlier avoid or slow the loss of function.  
They could learn.  
And that's why they had been murdered, Tyls laboratories raided, flooded, broken. 

But he could not give up. 

He loved his children. This wasn't just a phrase to throw at the Tenno as he had explained to the Queens.  
No, it wasn't pretend sentimentality but true care, an aberration in a people bred to murder without restraint or mental damage.  
That's why he never fled a fight with the Maggots who had taken so much from him.  
Had murdered his workers, hi men. His children. His future. Their future.

Destroyed his laboratory.  
And littered. 

Because some Woman with the name of an ancient terran flower told them.  
Because her power was endangered.  
And the tin-puppets followed, descended silently like angry spirits onto his work, only leaving death and broken parts.  
Tyl couldn't suppress a bitter comparison. 

The Tenno were as much puppets as their victims, driven to act, to Tyl, with unquestioned violence against targets that were to him, arbitrary.  
Maybe to them too? 

In all the time the Tenno descented onto his laboratories, they never had attempted to actually talk to him. 

But this one was. Which sparked a certain curiosity inside Regor.  
He, was, if he had to admit it to himself, yearning for something different, besides an attempt at hollow revenge and space to just work in peace. 

"So, old man", the voice said, sounding clear and unfiltered, "You are always around those dumdum Lancers, right?" 

The Warframe, Nezha posed like he was laughing at him.  
He resembled the figure found in the archives Regor used after his first painful death, punctured and bleeding profusely from Nezhas holy spears.

The mythic Prince depicted on the ancient materials found in the archives had posed the same way and like in the myth... this asshole wasn't staying dead either.  
Regor had pondered if this Tenno has had someone who could get It to stop.

The second fight had ended with Regor scolding himself for dallying about, reminiscing about ancient myths, while he felt himself dissolving slowly, hissing in pain radiating from the massive holes ripped by the Tigris wielded by his enemy.

"Do you actually listen to me or did your company impede your mental fortitude so yourself are as thick as your brutes?"  
Nezha posed, as if he was shrugging, full of the obnoxious rudeness of a brat in serious need of punishment.  
Tyl caught his mind, activated his Knux and sent them right into the tin-skulls stomach, throwing the frame against the wall.  
No dallying about today. He felt energized, but allowed himself just a second of satisfaction.  
Burnt child fears the flame, punctured Regor feared the spears.

"You know,”  
Regor was pleased hearing that the Tenno was in pain,  
“ You know a simple Yes would have done too.  
Or have you lost your verbal ability because you're around nobody who is mentally stimulating?” 

The frame slid past Regor without stopping in its banter. 

“Would've been quite sad for you to lose that sexy voice because your babies aren't the most communicative sort."

What.. _had he heard correctly?_  
Regor felt his brain going on vacation for a second.  
What the hell had that tin-skull just said??

He could hear a laughing.. 

“Oh I wish I could've seen your face! Well maybe I can after I detach your head from your nice shoulders...”

The scientists, catching his thoughts, fought down some crude emotions.

A fight surely wasn't a place for a confused boner because a fucking tin-man called him sexy...  
Was this a weird new sort of mental torture?  
A new technique designed to literally fuck with him,just mentally?..

Well it seems to have worked.

A blazing chakram hit him right in the face, setting him ablaze and taking the sight.  
Flames, Flames at the side of his head blinded him the heat taking air and any abilities to orientate himself.  
Instinctively, Tyl shot the recalled massive metal fists towards where he thought the windows were. To his relief he had aimed correctly.  
Water came down, cooling down, extinguishing the flames, taking the searing heat away.

"Oooh, hot" “that voice again. The scientist was unsure if there wasn't a speck of sincerity in it..  
but they both were fighting to the death so that was really not the right place nor time... 

Tyls head flashed around, trying to find the origin of these words.  
He could not see the frame, he readied his Ack & Brunt and took a defensive posture. 

"So, Dr Regor, aren't you bored?,"  
Every word using, Tyl scanned the room.  
Your "children", the Tennos words emanated a distanced sense of amusement,  
"can't even talk on the level of Clem, you know him, right? 

They just laugh like babies.. then they die.. Must be so boring.  
Why are you doing this?  
Why aren't you like Ruk, or Vey Hek the old man shouting at Tenno...  
You never change work.  
Why?”  
(These questions were ones, which the operator had pondered about in their years of service. The grineer tried to, well “improve” a lot. All but Regor.)

“It's not like the Queens will care as long as you make more bodies to be executed.” 

Tyl, now in full control again, jumped into a corner full of terminals and slammed his fist on the lockdown key, calling for his manics to reinforce the perimeter.

Then, quite sure where his enemy was located, Tyl Regor answered

"Oh,. little Maggot, why would I be bored? I have my children.  
You wouldn't know love if it'd beat you senseless, Maggot.  
Dont fucking try me.  
I will restore my children, no matter how often any of you Monsters try to take them from me!"  
With a twist of his body, Tyl threw his axe towards where he thought Nezha had been hidden, without interrupting his sentence. 

"And after I'm done with this, I'll have even more fun.  
We both will have fun once I have my hand deep inside your hollow, pitiful Maggot skull.”

Dodging the axe, Nezha vaulted over the railing, readying the Hek and took aim while the weapon barely missed him.  
Nezhas shot hit Tyl's shield, the intensity of the impact leaving little cracked bits of blue varnish dancing in the air.  
The axe landed with a heavy "clunk" behind Nezha, shattering a tile into little whirring shards that littered the ground. 

taktaktak "Tenno skoom" 

A Manic Bombard had taken position and shot, missing Nezhas lithe frame by mere millimetres,  
taking aim again, laying suppression fire, it shot again.  
Taktaktak  
The impacts, while dampened by the shield and Nezhas fiery halo, still felt like thousands tiny pricking needles being shot directly into the operators own flesh

Nezha slid towards the Manic, shooting his Hek while Regor dashed towards the frame, using the opportunity to grab the axe, swinging his shield as an impact weapon  
"hold still”  
Regor dashed forward, grabbing the axe, and, after a turn far too graceful for a grineer, Tyl drove Nezha with wild swings of both arms on the catwalk, below the windows. 

Tyl hummed elatedly while ejecting his body towards the massive glass window separating the lab from the endless sea of Uranus.  
Then he dashed towards the tin-suit, Knux on Aegis, the bodies dancing under the ocean.  
Sometimes a bullet grazed Regor, hit Nezha whose fiery halo disappeared, extinguished by suppression fire. Both traded blows on the thin metal walkway. 

Being under the now cracked pane, whose groans were hidden by the sounds of the battle  
Regor noticed and readied himself. 

Directing the tin-man, he spoke:  
"Oh, I'm not bored at all. Really, I'm a father, I have my beautiful children and it's not like.." 

He held in, concentrated his energy onto the glass pane until cracks formed, 

"you lot are any more communicative”

The glass shattered, pushing Nezha who didn't react quick enough, into the electrified water.  
The shields already almost diminished, the energy felt like searing lashes.  
With all his remaining control, Nezha tried to catapult himself out of the water. He managed only half way.  
Pulling himself out of the water, muscles spasm, the operator experiencing the same pain, gritting their teeth, not feeling how their nails were pressing inside the soft material of their seat, unable to stop their frame from shaking from the voltage.

"Oh how I love to see you squirm. Dirty lizard slithering at my feet where a disgusting useless freak like you belong.”  
Regors deep voice hummed with glee.

That voice.. Nezhas operator inhaled deeply, wishing, just for a second, that time would stop, that nothing else mattered. Just..  
Time didn't stop. 

They had to get out of their predicament. Nezhas energy was slowly refilling, but it wasn't enough to cast a halo.

Then, the Tenno made those stupid, stupid comments..

"Oh your children, as if they mean anythi.. 

Looking up, Regor towered over Nezha, and with a swiftness they should have expected, Tyls massive hand grabbed the Warframe by the neck, lifting it up... 

_"What are you saying?"_  
Cold. Calm. Low. Waiting for the wrong answer. 

They couldn't stop their dumb mouth again...

"Oh please, look at yourself, Regor, you got a **fucking Statue of yourself** in your laboratory!  
You love to hear yourself talk, this is about ego!  
That's why you do this...  
That massive thing isn't enough, you need bodies to prove your power...  
because you dickless meatheads cant do anything than **destro...**

The crash sounded like two massive tunnelling robots scraping into each other, groaning,screeching, hissing.

The impact had displaced any air out of the frame and its pilot.

Tyl, powered by a violent rage had slammed the tiny frame into the metal catwalk, which creaked indignantly before partly giving in, deformed by the massive force of Regors burning anger.  
Nezhas head hung into the water, the shocks jolting through the frames body...  
Its operator trying to react, but started to feel light headed, unable to fully comprehend what they had invited to come upon them.

Then Regor grabbed the flowing ribbons that wound under Nezhas cramping body  
Lifting it into the air by its ribbons, pulling it behind him, jumping to the upper floor, Nezha looked more like a ragdoll than like the rude and energetic pest that had inflamed Tyl with a few words and a lot of laboratory destruction.

Landing with the energy of a wet blanket, Nezha struggled to move.. They'd lost control. Failing to even assume a defensive position, operator and frame could just lie there, while Regor was violently pounding them into the ground..

The impacts took the little rest of breath Getting dizzier and dizzier, through their link they only saw Regors body blitzing out of their field of view, and back, Ack gripped.  
They were seeing stars, everything reddening, a high frequency beeping tone in their ears.  
They tasted blood and then, saw the Ack lifted, through reddish opaque view.. 

That man, towering over them, that mask, no sign of emotions, if they handn't just experienced Regors anger one could think nothing extraordinary had happened.. 

"I think I fucked up"- The tenno said, more to themselves.. Not more than a whisper..

They ouldn't move a finger.. everything burned, muscles cramped, even their teeth hurt.  
Regor placed his left leg onto Nezhas abdomen, pinning the frame down.  
Bowing down slowly, it felt like the weight alone was enough for Regors metal leg to violently rip through the frames torso. 

The pain made the operate almost delirious. It hurt so much, words just..fail, no air to make any sounds. Blood rushing in their ears..  
Fighting to blink, they couldnt do anything but accept their loss.. 

everything felt like slipping. They wanted it to end.

Trying, however badly, to get ready for the pain. Dying, “dying” never was a nice feeling. 

Then, Regor coldly said:

"Whoever, whatever you are, inside this tin puppet,..  
I **will** find you. Not this useless thing, **you...** ”  
The operator shivered, the high pitched sound in their ears getting louder, their tongue starting to feel numb..

“You will get your punishment and if its the last thing I'll do.. .  
I will find you and you will pay.”

He took aim, held.. in like he wanted to savor that moment, his enemy beaten, this time.

.. he was laughing..

“You know, I really have to thank you Tenno. You just made our lives much more interesting.  
I Promise”

Darkness came crashing down.

Transference severed.. 

Mission Failed,


	2. Interlude  The ruins of Dis

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Being out.. they have a flashback, or maybe just remember.. 
> 
> A bit of world building 
> 
> On the last days of the empire, a small group of Tenno tries to make it to the reservoir.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> description of violence,  
> Npc character death, violence

Sunder..  
Tenno.  
void burnt survivor of the void lost Zariman 10-0 

"Run, RUN!" Energy rained on the group of young teenagers who hurried through the massive Orokin structure. which was seemingly deserted.  
Shattered glass and molten bits of gold littered the floor, and the rumbling of explosions were slowly but surely increasing in intensity. 

The group was led by two teams of Orokin Dax, highly decorated group of elite warriors, sworn to protect the empire until the last man. 

Well armed, they ran as if they were part of a whole, wordless coordination, efficiency like between parts of a body.  
They acted as one, almost instinctively, communicating with signs and nods. 

Led by an aged warrior, Rayana Dax, a master in the profession of arms, decorated survivor of the massacre of Teleos and retired for years now.  
While he was still sharp and qualified, finding someone of his age on the battlefield was highly unusual.  
Orokin, praising perfection over everything, would have never allowed an aged warrior to lea lead to battle, or even like now, conduct a clandestine transport mission.  
But tar had been waging for a long time, it had eaten into the orokin forces, descimating its best, its aex dax, the warriors in their prime... now, in desperation they had begun to call back retired Dax to, not fight, but protect their last assets, to hide them far away from the sentients destruction.. 

None of the Dax wanted to, but the only way to show their hatred was to deny the Tenno any acknowledgement. Nobody spoke a word more than absolutely necessary.  
They didn't look at their "freight", they didn't touch them..  
If they could, every single one of them would bury their traditional daggers deep into the throats of the betrayers.  
But they could not, were physically unable to defy the will of their masters.  
The dax were born, made to serve, designed, formed, molded unable to be the oathbreaker.. 

They hated the tenno and, by extension, hated the orokin for making them risk their lives for a bunch of betrayers. 

Their mission had been going fine until now, they had found proof of a small ship stored in this deserted installation that would allow them to reach loa fast enough for the 9 Tenno to enter cryosleep, to the step into dreams, to be shifted, hidden away from their foe. 

But they were caught, a Murex had send a small sub ship loaded with sentient fighters to stop the group from leaving the wilted, consumed planet. 

Ducking and weaving from cover to cover, following the Daxes signals, the group tried to reach their destination..  
It wasn't far, they could make it..  
Around them, energy balls were exploding in icy, cutting cold. 

Ducking into a corridor, one of the warriors, Ririn Dax screamed out in pain.  
Her left shoulder got hit, the smell of tau-burnt flesh crept through the room.  
It smelled like. iodide and ozone, mixed with sweet flesh. 

"Go, go, Rayana shouted and threw a healing synthula to Ririn whose face had turned white and pallid.  
Her left arm hung useless from her shoulder, dripping some fluid onto the floor..  
Her flesh was hissing, the wound bubbled and the stench was disgusting. 

A piece of bone was sticking out of the sweltering crater where her shoulder had been, her armor melted around it.  
Akzu, a young warrior who hadn't finished his last lessons and therefore could not really been called Dax, turned green and started heaving.   
One of the Tenno, a previoussly meek boy ducked down and grabbed Ririns weapon, aimed and managed to hit the 'arm' of a sentiebt pursuer. The knock back was hard enough to slam the butt of the Lanka against his shoulder, making him groan in pain.

The other Tenno were unfazed by the horrible injury their protector had suffered. 

They could, on the first look, be literal children.  
But on a second, their inhuman nature became apparent, some of them marked by heavy facial scarring in colours no human body should have, other were looking quite ordinary, if not betrayed by an intense, otherworldly glow in their eyes.  
They were acting as if someone losing a piece of their body through a massive shot wound was just normal, everyday occurance. 

Orokins Dax soldiers were trained and experienced in seeing and giving death but even they were, in the end, human beings and unable to fully cut off their emotions.  
They still were bound by their masters will, no matter how unwilling, like ke when they were made to protect and even die for the people who had brought them into this abattoir.. 

"We need to reach the loading platform, move Ririn or we have to leave you..." 

Ririn Dax was stumbling and in shock, unable to fully follow orders..  
Without a word, two of the void demons stepped left and right beside her. 

Ririn screamed in anguish when Teeno to her left, a young boy took her arm and threw it over his shoulder.  
His glowimg eyes scared Ririn, whose legs began to jitter.. 

"Go", the other young Tenno said, and they continued their way, always followed by the eerily silent assault of their sentient pursuers.  
Dodging an ornament that impacted, shattering the ground. over them, a massive impact had shattered the walls, dislodged the beautiful golden ornaments and the intricate glasswork. A fine fog of dust and splinters of glass was dancing in the light..The whole building was shifting..and bits of the roof were falling down, massive projectiles of gold.. 

"AMON,, RUN"  
but it was too late, Amonkhet, the fourth of the squad fell to the ground with a gargling sound, eyes turned to the back of his head, punctured by a massive golden frame that nailed his body to the floor.  
"Run run!" They couldn't do anything anymore..  
The piece had shot right through him and had killed the man in ab instant, a small grace.  
Ririn had been shifting in and out of consciousness, the synthula had helped with the pain, but the sentients weaponfire was unlike anything they had experienced. It didn't just breach the thickest armor, but once hit, the residue would eat into the wound, prevent healing unless the area was cut off, scraped out before it would reach the internal organs.  
A massive wound like on Ririn was a death sentence, every one of them knew. 

She would stay. Akzu gave her his Lato, took her Lanka and, for the last time, lovingly touched her face.  
Teary eyed, the young recruit joined the small ship and only allowed himself to cry once the airlock closed shut. 

The children were sitting in a circle, silent, staring into nothingness..  
The air around them felt electric and smelled of tau.. 

Akzu, not bound by the Orokin, screamed like a wounded animal, lunged into the group and just started to wail on the young children...  
He just hit, not caring who he hurt.. most children scrambled away, some raised their arms to protect their head and three were just.. letting it happen, maybe from a sense of guilt.. 

Amonkhet pulled the young warrior down, slapped him and then locked him into the cargo hold to cool off. 

They reached lua without further delays. 

The children entered the sleep. Fearful. expectant. crying. hopeful. hollow. 

. -. -. -. -. -. -. -. -. -. -. -. -. -. - . -. -. -. -. -. -. -. -. -. -. -. -. -. -. -. -. -. -. -. -. -. -. -. -. -. -


	3. Interlude 2 Psyches last task

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Still mentally returning to their body, our main character remembers who made them who they are..

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fluff, disjointed memories.. Yes, the next chapter will get a bit spicier. Just a bit ;}   
> I posted the 2 pretty fast after another so I would be grateful if anyone could notify me about typos or wonky grammar that I surely will have overlooked.   
> 
> 
> "You owe me one, kiddo"

how long had they been asleep? 

Buildings crumbled, Earths green tendrils had managed to slowly reclaim the barren lands that had the reason for the Orokin, masters of gold and alabaster, to devise the desperate plan whose unintended consequences would lead to their own eradication.  
It would free a slave race and at the same time, bind them to unending decay. 

It was a bitter irony, earth flourished only after the orokin were eradicated, and in their place, life grew anew. 

The Tenno slept whilst the system had seen disappearance of the initial granum of the body that would, decades, even centuries later wreck the system in its ever unending lust for profit, embroiled in landgrabbing war with the sad detritus that became of the progenitor grineer. 

The orokin had fallen, destroyed by their own creation, betrayed led by betrayers, children who had been severed from family and origin, had been touched by the madness of the void and had been judged and sentenced to survive. 

Voidself, voidburn. how many could not forget?

Burt child fears the flame, these children were made addicted to its touch. 

Sundered from the past, cut off by time and dream, they wanted to forget, to forge a way anew. But still, without knowing they followed the path that was lied down before them. 

When they reentered the waking world, they were led by a motherly voice that resonated deeply inside them, the Tenno had followed. Else, they were alone.  
Children, befamed destroyer, cut from their family tree, too young to be strong enough to become saplings, to grow stronger they had needed help. someone to lean onto. 

So they had followed again, a children's crusade, led by someone who was at once, close and endlessly far away.  
Had grown up, in body, but their mind had only known war..  
What else to do than fight?

When they had awoken, in a new world, most of the old archives of family data were degraded. 

The tenno were of use to the orokin, but worth enough to store their names, their family ties into a storage that would be able to be read centuries after?   
No, they were tools.   
You usually don't record the history of your favourite hammer now? 

Because of this, Sunder had chosen their own name. Not because they had forgotten - not for a lack of wishing - but because who she was had died on the Zariman 10-0, when the void touched her. 

Because unlike what the other children told 'her' then.. 

Her reflection wasn't fully her.   
It didn't look like her.  
It sounded different.. but yet close. It was a nasty secret that 'she' had tried to buty since she could remember.  
Someone clever once said, "No matter how far you run, your shadow will always stay with you" 

'Her' voidself hadn't allowed any choice but to go forward.

When the Void self touched 'her', pressed into a corner, fear, no panic in 'her' eyes they understood. They became. 

They knew that the lie that she'd been would have to die for them to survive. 

As their voidself touched her, she who had been wished to never have been born, suddenly felt hunger not for food, just for anything, touch, taste, any sensation..It was like the touch had freed a hungry feral being and it would not be denied.  
.. 

With it, suddenly, there came the will to survive, no to live. To be. 

Burning white cold flames ravaged the skin where the void touched them, burnt them clean, shattered the assumptions others she had been made to accept without question.  
It burnt herself.. and from her ashes, they emerged. 

"You owe me, Kiddo." 

They did. 

The name Sunder was a reminder. A promise to never do this again, a self lie strong enough it could have killed them. 

After the awakening 

They had followed the lotus. They had grown. Fallen into a routine, aquired new frames, fought their way through what had become from the survivors of the old war, the day of red silk, when the empire fell. 

They had trusted. 

They fought because it was fun to them, not thinking what that meant, what they took from others. Often enough their causes were just. Help to stem the tide of the infestation, protect the venusian and earthen plains from exploitation by corpus and grineer.  
Defend the people of the Mykona, help the inspiring Cressa Tal to protect the small people.. 

Crashing Uranuses genetic labs felt, on the surface, like any other missions.  
And fighting the regors was fun, a sparring with high risk, high reward. 

It wouldn't be fun if there was no risk, right?  
Sometimes you win. 

This time they lost. 

But this loss felt different. Like the first step down a ladder,  
the last chance to grab still in reach.

but one step more and life would take them to a destination they secretly yearned for, an exciting unknown  
.  
Would they take it?..  
.


	4. In which our Tenno tries to justify themselves, drinks tea and.. relaxes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Our Tenno tries to justify their sloppy fight, Ordis is like ones own parents in the sense that it is really hard to hide things from him. 
> 
> At the end of the day, Sunder tries to justify themselves and makes the decision to return

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some more abstract fantasies and very brief description of masturbation at the end of the chapter 
> 
> I still have to fight with my computer, since the win10 updates I can't do anything without having to wait up to 5 minutes for programs to react, including file explorer.
> 
> To preserve my sanity I've decided to write on smartphone, but that program has not spelling check, nor do I have the funds to pay a beta reader..   
> If you find a typo PLEASE let me know   
> Thanks

With a hiss, the pod opened.   
From it staggered a tired, beaten tenno..   
Surprisingly lean, short cropped hair, grey blue eyes, unlike a lot of Tenno, was lacking the unearthly glow that marked the former children - but their void self had burnt them, the neck and chin were marked by void tendrils, etched into their skin, shimmering in colours no human should have. 

"Fuuuuuuuuck.." they rubbed their belly, around the solarplexus where it Regors leg had nailed them into the floor..   
His weight had, concentrated by the tiny surface, felt as if it should have ripped right through the warframe.   
But, despite the awful feeling there was no massive bloody wound in their thorax.   
Feeling nauseated, they gripped the seat, breathing slowly they tried to find their bearings.   
The transference suit sticked to their body, drenched in sweat, cooling down and clinging uncomfortably to their thighs. 

They felt wretched, hoping the room would stop turning long enough that they could stumble into the hygiene cell.. 

The hip that made initial contact with the unfortunate catwalk pulsed with a dull ache.   
Their nerves usually needed about half an hour to notice that their own body wasn't really hurt. 

"Ordis, please prepare the hygiene cell, I need a hot bath.. I feel like a horde of Nox had a party on my body..   
Oh and it would be lovely if you could feed in the materials for a fast reconstruction..   
I fucked up and the anti Alad insurance has done its work." 

The warframes had an option to auto dissolve, nanobots were triggering a massively exothermic reaction in the technocyte cells, literally burning up the frame..  
It was an insurance, after what Alad V had managed to do with severed limbs and...   
Valkyr.   
So at least there was the knowledge, that none of the science behind the warframes & weapons would fall into enemy hands.

Still, losing against Tyl felt bad.. After all Sunder had fought against him quite often...   
At the beginning, because it allowed acess to tyls research, just for a few minutes until the dead mans switch started.   
Rolling encryption made file select a gamble, they only learned what they had selected after the program got cracked and the only capable Cephalon had to have the dates on his mainframe. 

For some reason, Sunder found out that Tyl had a set of warframe data that could be fed into the foundry to reconstruct Equinox.   
Sunder had wondered how in the world a Grineer scientist was a thing that exists and then one who has knowledge about warframe technology?  
One, whose field were molecular genetics, cellular /organic chemistry and who didn't, unlike Tengus, was working on weapons, but to better his own people.   
(Of course, that betterment would increase Grineer fighting capability, but getting them better food would too but the lotus never sent them to kill the queen's cook or whatever) 

Tyl Regor. was a curious one.. 

And like every unlucky cat, the Operators curiosity that demanded to be sated, leading to them spending a lot of time in archives and in uranus deep sea layer, trying to learn about the fascinating figure. 

When they got cocky, Sunder had almost finished their set. One single fucking part was missing, but after a month of regular mission, they'd admit they enjoyed the fights..   
Of course the Tenno usually won..   
They had failed missions because the warframe was too damaged, but this was usually not the result of their lack of self control and some deep urge to, metaphorically spoken, poke the bear and look what happens. 

Now they had learned what happens if they poked the Tyl-bear and, like the utterly stupid git they were...   
They still were not satisfied..   
They were filled with a mix of apprehension and also a kind of burning excitement.

They did wonder from time to time what was wrong with their head, because despite their death, and "dying" was a pretty painful thing, there was a fraction of them that had enjoyed being physically dominated, pushed into the floor and beaten. 

His voice, what and how he said it.. Sunder could not shake the feeling that he enjoyed hurting as much as they had enjoyed getting hurt.   
Just remembering what he had threatened made them shiver in anticipation. 

Of course their knowledge of the temporary nature of, "death" in warframe form could be a reason.   
The known safety mechanism, maybe even a reflex, pulled them always out of the frame before the self destruct started, but anything else until then hurt like shit... 

And they caught themselves hoping that, one fight would leave them with a longer lasting memory, a mark, something they could feel, touch, recall. Something more than their memories who would melt together into something indistinct. 

The cephalon pulled sunder out of their thoughts   
_"Ordis has already prepared the bath for the operator."_  
"You are a treasure, Ordis," 

They walked to out of the transference room. With a hiss, a wall panel popped up and opened a small room   
Directly left was a mirror, a small cabinet with the necessary hygiene products, soap   
Behind that was a small tub, one person could sit inside it to relax, wash themselves, shower.   
A civilization that could make energy shields was able to design technology that would waterproof doors. 

Sunder undressed and put the transference suit through an opening into a container that would use their bath water and excess heating from the propulsion system to steam clean their sweaty, sticky clothing..   
They don't wore underwear, the suit had to touch skin directly to send the sensory input from the frame into their body. If anything was between the microscopically tiny contacts and their skin, that bit of warframe would not send any feedback, it would feel like a body part was missing and impede synchronised movement. 

They could wear clothing over it though. Sunder themselves was quite fond of the style of the vent kids, venusian orphans who were only avoiding slaving under Nef Anyo, preacher of greed, because they could hide in the air vents until their body would inevitable grow too large and betray them.   
Sunder loved their clothing style. 

Stepping out of their shoes and pulling down their pants, they still had the urge to look at where injuries should have been. 

In the early days of their second awakening, during cleaning sessions in the bathroom, Sunder would stand in front of the mirror and search for the marks of battle.   
The stabs, electric zaps, slash wounds, the burns, be it chemical, frost or fire, the puncture wounds..   
But nothing ever remained, besides the old scars, where the void had broken in.   
Had changed them, grabbing them in a way they could never ignore.

Rubbing their right hip, the bit of Nezha that made the harsh first contact with that unfortunate catwalk, Sunder cursed their own dumb mouth... 

They never had the best self control, were impulsive, easily interested and easily bored. Most shit only had a fleeting effect, like the new ludoplex.   
180 points on Wyrmius and they had given up. Fighting was their their life, fighting and cooking, as much that was possible in the small hidden kitchen, stowed away in a cylinder that would raise up from the ground once activated. 

They finished bathing, slipped into a wide, comfortable apparel and made tea. 

"Ordis, cook water please"   
_"30 seconds until available"_  
"Very good"   
They took a vessel and filled a small bag of cloth with a mix of dried ostron spices, venusian fungi and earth herbs. 

The mix was sold by ostron farmers on the market in cetus, advertising it as a refreshing beverage that would help to stay awake and alert during intense working hours. 

Sunder added water to it stirred it. 

"Ordis, T minus 180 Sekunden"   
_"Received"_  
Sending the cooking box back into the wall, they walked to the foundry, they waited until Ordis told them the 3 minutes were over.   
Fishing out the satchel with a pair of chopsticks and placing it into the waste unit, Sunder took the mug . 

It was a beautiful piece, handmade from some materials the ostron must have scavenged, but with a golden pattern that looked like the artisan had smashed it, then filled the cracks with liquid gold. 

The Tenno had entered their own little space, sat on the floor, head laid back on the couch, staring at the ceiling, sipping this drink.   
The first sip was disgusting, a mushroomy taste, then a crisp sharp spritz of citrus.  
A floral aroma soon started to overwhelm the funny fungal taste. 

The ostron had recommended sweetening the water to get used to the drink, their people swore on it when their fighters had to stay awake and alerted. 

Which, because of the Grineer invasion of the plains was becoming a permanent situation. 

From space, the earth was a beautiful, calm jewel.   
.. Full of Grineer zits.   
(Why did their own subconsciousness have to ruin nice moments all the time?..) 

Stretching their right leg, Sunder activated the Somachord, set a relaxing tune and closed their eyes, letting their mind go wherever it wanted.. 

It wandered to a certain muscular Grineer.. 

Tyl Regor did have a weird pull on them,  
The Tenno had to admit to themselves..   
Often, they asked themselves if Ordis had noticed how many times they sat in navigation, hovering over the ocean planet, listening to the taunts that Regor had made to the Tenno to call them, us. To fight him.   
It made them feel a weird yearning, something that they always felt a bit ashamed of. 

Ordis opened a channel. 

_"Operator, maybe if you were to reduce the banter, you could_ **have murdered that** _beaten Regor easily.  
Routine is the enemy of perfe_

Sunder, annoyed about the interruption, interrupted the cracked cephalon, appearing more angry than intended.   
"Shut up Ordis! I managed to copy 90 % of Equinox Data from the previous fights with Regor, I know how to deal with him, I killed him often enough...   
I'm really not open to have another bag of criticism, okay?"   
They hoped, Ordis would not notice their defensiveness in all things Regor.. 

_"Apologies, Operator. Ordis will leave the Operator to their thoughts"_

Ordis was a cephalon now, but did understand human emotions.   
After Sunder had learned what a cephalon was, they often pondered what had been Ordis crime that led to him into becoming a cephalon, losing his self but retaining their own emotions and memories.   
(Ordis had some physical damage that had cost him his memories..   
Maybe for Ordis, the loss was a gift,   
After all, the memories were said to be the worst part fo glassing. 

Someone once said 'you can't miss what you never had'  
Therefore, you will miss what is taken from you. 

Emotions, your own memories.   
Yourself.   
Broken into a new purpose.   
Serving someone were made to love.. 

Taking some sips, Sunders mind came back to their lost 'sparring-match' 

What the fuck were they thinking?   
Grineer were enemies! 

They had all reasons, Sunder had to admit after thinking about what they had learned after their reawakening. 

That the Grineer had been a literal slave class from the people who made everything.   
Sunders pre war and pre sleep memories were fuzzy at best.. They sometimes dreamed about the last few days before they had entered cryosleep, but beside that?.. They thought they didn't remember. They didn't want to remember.   
Nothing in the past but loss and heartache. 

So they only later learnt, what the Grineer were.. Slaves.   
Freed by the massacre the Tenno committed.   
The day of red silk.  
The ninth hour.   
The ninth drum. 

But this had not saved the Grineer.  
It had condemned them. 

Shaking their head, trying to think about something a bit more nice than a dead and bloody past, Sunder cursed their lower urges.. Again. 

Thinking about Regor and sipping tea they asked themselves how Tyl was manage to return from death every time.. 

"I wonder if these are clones or... maybe Regor was like themselves, coming back again and again, using a kind of transference, like by infesting kuva and then returning to the fight without truly knowing, lead by a matronly figure" they said to themselves. 

The Grineer were led by a mother, like the Tenno, to a bloody, violent purpose. 

But Regor seemed more fatherly. 

Sunder never understood the pull that children had on their fellow Tenno..   
But they could understand it for the Grineer, made sterile like a dog.  
But that was the role of the Grineer, an attack dog for the golden empire.. 

So children as a symbol of hope and future made sense.. But Sunder regarded the idea of having children with as much   
fondness as the idea to cuddle a toxic Ancient eximus. 

Remembering what they had learned about Regor, Sunder thought Regor to be a good father.,remembering him codeswitching to have a good rapport with his mentally underdeveloped grunts.  
On the other hand, other Grineer weren't really holding the bar up high.. 

Suddenly, while pondering the question of how good a Lotus Regor would be Sunder started laughing..   
The image of Tyl Regor with the Lotus Helmet and in her dress the lotus-helmet popped up inside their head space and would not leave. 

The snorting laughter leading to them getting tea up their nose. This triggered a little cascade of tiny catastrophes which ended with Sunder, laying on the floor, alternating sneezing and laughing, surrounded by a puddle of tea. 

A tiny cleaning robot came into the room and started cleaning up Sunder mess. 

_"Is the operator okay? The operator is acting_ **childi** _unusual_

Sunders thoughts trailed off, and, still sneezing, they answered  
"Oh ordis, everything is fine."   
They sneezed again.. 

"Oh, Ordis pease can you stop snooping on me in my private quarters please, I really need some privacy, OK?" 

_"But operator, how can I protect you from_   
**your own dumb deci**   
_a repeat of the shadow stalker?_

"Ordis, if that one were in my private quarters without you noticing, then our security is useless" . Sunder said. 

"You should be able to have a secure overview without listening in on"   
Ordis cracked in 

**your little Regor fantas**

"What?!" 

They shouted at Ordis, more surprised than angry. How did he know? 

Sunder felt naked. Caught. And blushed with such an intense red, they would able to hide in a bag of infestation without anyone noticing 

_Operator, Ordis overstepped. Ordis is sorry & should not have said anything."_

"How the Stars do you know?"  
If ordis had a face, it would be saying "Seriously?" now.   
Luckily, the symbol representing Ordis was not able to do so.   
To be honest, Sunder didn't care about justifying themselves to Ordis 

_"The operator sometimes listens to Regors" come get me" messages and turns red. So unless the Operator has developed a previously unknown allergy to voices, even the Lunaro cephalons would notice"_

" Ordis " They couldn't hide their tiny indignation..   
Were they so damn openly readable? 

_"Ordis cares for the Operator and this Grineer has tried to murder you repeatedly."_  
He sounded pleading.. 

Sunder answered :  
"Yes, with good reasons or do you think I was drinking tea and politely asking for his data?.. Thats a rhetorical question, no need to answer it Ordis..  
He has every right to be angry.   
I murdered him and his children a minimum of 16 times now.   
I flooded a dozen laboratories a dozen times.   
I would be angry too!   
I won't tell him that he can't be angry when I kill his cloned body again and again because.."  
They paused, took a breath. They didn't want to say it, but they had to.. 

"because the Lotus told me to do it and I trust her. 

You were there with us in Hunhows tomb, Ordis."  
SHE LIED TO US, Ordis, she tried to hide this.   
Lying by omission is still a lie! 

The tenno felt tension rise. They were attacking the Lotus, the reason they were here now and not a step in Captain Vors Rise to the top..   
But they still had to talk about it.. 

"Ordis, how can you expect me to trust her now?   
After what she has asked us all to do?  
What if we have been a pawn working for sentients all the time?"   
There was hurt in Sunders voice. About the broken trust.. about getting lied at. They hated this more than anything else. 

"What do we do if She never broke with her father and this just was some sick play we played for the sentients, to cull all the groups that could, if working together, seriously endanger their end goal?" 

"Can you promise me that's not true?? "  
Silence 

It was out. What they had thought all the time, but now it was out, in the open. 

There was no way back now. To pretend nothing had happened.. 

They looked down on their hands, where the emptied cup stared back. Their hands trembled very slightly..   
The wet areas on their pants, where the tee had splashed on were starting to dry.   
. 

"And another thing.. We already are at the peak of emotional discomfort, so fuck it.." 

Pauses punctuated the spoken.   
Why were they ashamed? feeling attracted was normal 

(Feeling attracted to your enemy isnt you fucking dumbass!! The operator will berated themselves internally) 

"You have noticed so I won't hide it.   
He fascinates me.   
I.. I can't explain why I feel this way, his voice makes me feel in a way I thought was overplayed clichés in stories..   
I just.. 

I have been with Tenno, but it never was like this, like my mind is possessed and it scares me and at the same time I want it so badly!"

Sunder stared at their hands, fiddling with the mug  
.  
"Like.. Maybe I'm just getting mad, but I feel like he's different and the only violence I see him enact is to protect his children. Sure, he threatens a lot, but its not like we didn't start it. 

We both have met Tengus creations.. compare the two and Regor seems like a cuddly Floof compared to the Necro docter, Ghoul maker who thinks torturing his own subject is scientific.  
I'd not share a space with Tengus if it were the last one in the system, but Tyl."   
Turning reddish, Sunder stared into the air. 

They put the mug away, pulled the legs closer to their body and rested their forehead on their knees. 

Mumbling, they said   
" I don't understand myself. It scares me, Ordis, but... "  
Looking up, there was the wish for understanding in their eyes. 

" You should know, Ordis" 

_What should Ordis know?_

"How it is to want to be with someone, even if you don't really know them, just just have your idea about them in your mind, but..   
You want to try it, to risk being wrong while hoping you are right..   
And, in the end, wanting to be with them, submitting to them, being theirs, serving.. 

_Ordis knows. Ordis cares for the Operator_  
There was a cracking, like as if the rough, cracked Ordis wanted to say something..   
But it staid silent.   
_"Ordis love for the Operator is his purpose._

Sunder looked up, with a tiny smile of relief. 

"I appreciate it very much, Ordis." They smiled again. 

"Please never tell this to anyone, Ordis.   
If I ever don't return from Uranus +, don't call for help.   
Lie to the lotus! "   
_"Ordis can't do his, Operator_

"Okay..maybe I expect too much..   
You could wait maybe for a few hours?   
Would that be OK?" 

There was no answer... 

Sunder continued. 

"I know you can do one thing for me.   
Please stop monitoring my private room,   
sometimes I really want some private space without you... observing me." 

With a dour face, Sunder remembered the time they had to explain to Ordis that they weren't in pain or hyperventilating when he interrupted some private.. relaxation.. 

_Ordis will oblige but wants to note that He is not doing this of his free will_

"I can live with that" , they grinned. 

After stowing away the mug and changing into the now warmed and cleaned transference suit, Sunder tried getting their mind from last hour to some other fun things. 

Like taking the Ignis to infested and letting them popping like they were ostron balloons. 

They spent some hours grilling on a derelict, filling up the materials that the reconstruction was costing them. 

After hours of burning infested, a second bath and some food, Sunder went to sleep on a rolled out futon, hidden in a side compartment. 

Despite being exhausted by the number of extermination they had run,   
the Operator was lying awake, unable to sleep. 

Quite unsuccessfully, they tried to justify their goading of Regor to themselves.   
Unsuccessfully, because they knew that it was their stupid lack of self control that had led to their last, painful but deserved loss and because they had to admit that wanted a reaction. 

They just wanted to have a bit of fun, right? 

And having a massive statue of yourself in every lab you work IS quite narcissistic..   
So the assumption Regor had to compensate... something was not that far off.. 

But what then? They had pokef the Tyl bear and it had noticed them. 

They didn't want to die, they.. well they yearned for the angry, powerful Grineer to take them, bend them over and raw them, grab and hold them down with his powerful biomechanical hands. 

They wanted to fight, to struggle, to lose, be at his mercy, no control. Restricted, but secured..   
Just imagining that situation made Sunder glow as red as their Kubrows Nose during solstice.. 

They had a weird, fluttery feeling in the pit of their stomach, closing their eyes they shivered.   
Imagining themselves in Regors control, their heart beat faster..   
Something else was flush with hotness.   
They were wet already. 

The word punishment hung heavy in their mind and in their lap, burning with want.  
They brought themselves over the edge with an ease they hadn't ever felt before, crashing..   
Their mind was silent. 

For a moment they just were there, feeling themselves, letting the waves ebb down and just sensing their body let go.. 

Licking their fingers off, breathing heavily they stared out into space. 

They would return. Not just to finish Equinox.   
But to offer themselves and ask for forgiveness.  
And if not given, return to at least give Tyl Regor, likely only molecular biologist of the Grineer, some satisfactory kills.   
They felt like Regor deserved the wins, or some other kind of restitution...   
and Sunder felt, like they deserved pain. Even the one that wasn't fun. 

Satisfied with their decision, they slowly slipped away into a dreamless void.


	5. In which an angry scientist has not been waiting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After smashing the foul mouthed Frame into a pulp, Regor now attempts to find out, who exactly was stupid enough to try to mess with him, personally.  
> Poking bears tends to result in very grumpy angry bears and this one is looking for the source of his anger

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Regular World building, nothing naughty.  
> yet.  
> Bit World building.   
> Bit about the scientists past, what made him take on this goal he got so rudely distracted from. 
> 
> My naming convention for Regors Kids, because its likely that the nr of Laboratorien have a not insignificant throughput. 
> 
> Laboratory name, Nr, Batch.   
> E.g The 132st Person of the fifth batch - Ariel 132 E, shortened Ari-e
> 
> He finds what he has looked for.

After he had won the fight against a Tenno, Tyl regor needed a while to calm down. Not just did the tinsuit talk, it was a rude asshole.

Not that he hadn't expected anything else from the Tenno, known betrayers, but the depth of cruelty, not just killing his children, destroying his laboratory, but then, not happy with the destruction, the Tenno had to try to emotionally hurt him? 

If the barb hadn't stung, right into the feels, so to speak, Tyl Regor would have laughed about it.   
He had nothing to prove, to the opposite, the fact that the Lotus sent assassination commandos and saboteurs after him was proof of his success.   
That manipulative woman didn't seem like someone who would waste their forces on insignificant targets. 

This alone was proving that his work was dangerous to her. Small graces. 

He had much to do. His first goal was to identify the 'very. intelligent' Tenno that decided they had to have a high ranking Grineer as an angry dedicated enemy.   
That made it personal. 

More personal than ruining his work, making him use the necessary resources he had to utilise to ready another clone, even more than having the elder Queen getting on his nerves, even more than straining his mind by forcing him to transfer into his new body which was quite exhausting. All this he'd gotten used to. The old song and dance, one all parties had, more or less, comfortably shifted into. He would shift his important databases into multiple submarine laboratories, would leave only his warframe data behind to not arouse suspicion. The tenno had to find things, after all. 

Tyl was endlessly amused by the fact the attack dogs of the Lotus never noticed that the laboratories they raided had not a shred of relevant data lying around. No rules for repairing atrophied nerves, nothing to fix & elongate the telomere stumps, nothing to stop the agglomeration of defective proteins that would trigger cell suicide, apoptosis. 

All this told him that the Tenno were playing with things they didn't understand, stumbling around like little children, drunk with power they utilised like an infested beating their victim with a loaded Karak, unable to use it correctly and satisfied with the results nonetheless. 

Now one of them had, intentionally or not, called upon a vengeful enemy. 

Regor swapped his left arm. To interact with his work stations he had a range of specialised arms appropriate to his needs.   
His Knux, his "stress relievers", a set of regular hands(his Ack wasn't really useful if he wanted to eat, shower or change clothing) and a specialised set that was his lab set: acess terminals, pipettes, injectors and a chip reader. Using this lab set, he linked into the data slots, avoiding more complicated input methods like typing - he could navigate the databases and servers with his mind. 

Decades ago, when the first Tyl had started to experience a growing loss of feeling in his arm, he was distraught. The then young regor had known that amputation was inevitable, without any senses, he wouldn't feel temperatures, or accidental contact with acidic substances, he wouldn't notice the pulsating pain nor the heat that were two of the four signs of inflammation. 

For a while he had given in to desperation until he had met other Grineer who were impacted far worse.   
One previous lover, a Lancer had failed to hide the effects of mental degradation from Regor. 

This motivated him.   
Wanting to not lose more people he cared for, Tyl decide to burrow in old data, abduct Corpus Scientists and initially on his own, learn to wield the microscopic tools allowing him to soften the violent impacts of their designed flaw. 

He had decided that he would find a way to, if not undo the damage to his body, then to his people. 

To his surprise, the Queens were appreciative, they seemed more reactive than preventive to him, but he was happy to be wrong that time. 

His work would be beneficial to the whole Grineer and so he found himself with funding and, after some very promising initial successes he had found himself head of a vast laboratory complex on Uranus. 

Still, his own arms he could not save. He was no soldier, the risk of injuries were smaller, but he needed his hands. 

If he could not manage to fix whatever had caused the nerve damage, he and all his clones would have atrophied, thin arms. No motor neuron function means no control, the hand would form a claw, muscles yielding to sinews and bone. So he decided to have both arms taken off. 

When he saw, how fast his own manics would become after they had been given their leg supports, he had asked for some special legs too. 

One benefit of being part of a massive war machine is accessing its inventors..   
Colleagues in arms & fabrication had worked on several unique prosthetics that Regor could switch out easily, connected via vac pressure and neural conduits

It was a quid pro quo, his genetic therapies repaired and improved, their prosthetics did the same for areas Regor could not fix. 

Tyl was looking over the list of ships which had entered his air space yesterday. Looking for small vessels that weren't sending out ID tags, he could limit it to 5 landing crafts, all Tenno owned. Now he had run it to find the one ship that had delivered the tinsuit to his bait lab at the specified time. He easily found it. 

As expected, the ship had not even sent trash data that, on the first look, appeared to be authorised ID tag.   
The tenno seemed to know how overworked the rail controllers were.

He opened comms and started to tap his fingers, rhythmically. 

For anything private, he had taught his closest children how to communicate in in click code. A way to communicate without anyone listening in. His manics were, well, manic, so them nervously clicking and tapping on surfaces hadn't aroused any suspicions. 

"To   
Energy L3 

Sent: visual +auditory + emissions ; lander, tenno

need: fingerprint  
giveto Flight C1, to :Run Db, T: From Now to - 2* 30 full cycle   
(Last 2 'months') 

30 minutes later he had his data, a list of the times that lander had been in tyl regors airspace.   
below it: Have given it to siblings, no preliminary answer. 

He also had the ID,  
Spectrum of sound, emissions of fuel, volume displacement, temperature range, paintjob.   
Every ship had this fingerprint, it was the ID of the ship, sent out automatically. Railjockeys and other groups who needed to travel unnoticed would have ways to change that fingerprint slightly, enough to slip by undetected. 

But his Tenno didn't.

Regors children would find the Tennos sticky fingerprints all over grineer airspace. Then, weeks later, opportunity struck on the heels of a catastrophe. 

The elder Queen was dead. His people knew, but he had explained them quite clearly that they were to not talk about this to anyone else, if they wanted to stay on Uranus. 

Soldiers who didn't follow rules were sent to the penal battalions. Penal battalions were the unlucky ones to deal with the infestation. Nobody wanted that. 

Tyl Regor himself didn't mind that the elder Queen had died, quite the opposite. He was happy as long as he could work in peace, improving his children and of course using his work to support the forces from which he recruited the Drekar. 

Knowing that the elder Queen would never annoy him again was freeing. But the real gift came 24h later. 

A day after he learnt the news, he had a visit. The door opened with a hiss and a very energetic manic was standing in his quarters. "Dad, sorry, Tyl, I found something you really want to look at" The young man, Ariel 132-C, or just Arac, was positively giddy. He tried to act cool and controlled but was failing miserably. The young manic had been given the role of working directly for the Queens, well one Queen now. That was an honour and he had tried to act as regal as possible, but now home, Arac let go of this act.. "I had remembered your missive and I thought I'd ask Kuva air control to run your fingerprint and you won't believe it.." Arac was unable of standing still, teetering on the tip of his toes, back and forth, overflowing with an euphoric energy. He was bouncy like the rubber balls that the kennel master used to play with his young litter of drahk. 

"Calm down a bit please" Regor looked at his young tubeson, unable to be annoyed.. 

"Dad, we found your Tenno.. And" Regor could hear a wide smile hidden under the manics mask "We have pictures of it. You know, the whole Palace has just acted as if nothing has happened, but,..   
She died because she underestimated the Tenno" Ari-e's voice got sharp for a second. 

"How did that Lizard find the fortress?" 

"Oh, the Queen wanted to be found, She wanted to take over the void devil's body.. She lost"

They both knew that they were in big trouble should anything from this meeting ever reach the worm queen. 

"The Queen had a full document with information about the tenno, it's name, age, how it looks. We will be able to find it. It won't be able to hide from you.. " 

Ari-e was looking up, waiting for his dad to react. 

"Well done Son" If he hadn't been wearing his helmet, his smile would've illuminated even the darkest spaces. 

Tyl Regor held his arms wide open. "Come"   
They hugged, a rare treat of parental appreciation to any of his surviving kids that were stationed in other grineer garrisons. Regor was physically close with his children the first year after they entered life. To the Queen, he had explained that this was improving their overall capabilities immensely.   
To himself, he admitted that he enjoyed being close with his children, supporting them. It made him happy and it was improving their mental abilities, they were learning faster than the batches of army grunts. 

He couldn't explain why, but it didn't really matter anyways.   
But then, he had to prepare them for the cruelty of life and would offer hugs only as a rare treat for a work well done. 

"I will have to go back, I only got Umbriel 21C to jump in for me today, She owed me a favour." 

They held each other close for another second, taking in the comfort of each others affection, then slowly letting go.   
Regor looked at his son. 

"Please take care of your siblings. And if you see that Tenno, don't fight it.. I have lost against it more than I want to admit, I don't want you to get hurt. If you must, get beaten up but please, flee."   
In his head only, he added 'The worm queen is not worth dying for' 

Waving goodbye, the manic blinked away. Regor took the data pad and closed himself into his private quarters. Regor had his answer. 

A void demon, a surviving child not child, physically barely adult, mentally, who knows after the centuries of cryosleep.. Well that would explain the bratty behaviour, Regor thought.   
Tyl didn't admit it, but he was glad that the Tenno hadn't killed the Queen, but allowed time to take her out of the equation of power.   
The elder one was clever, too clever but Regor hadn't been able to bring himself to do anything more than insure that his own position would stay comfortable for him. Isolated from the muck and bullshit of the Army, researching in peace, as much as the slimy Tenno Lizard-mother allowed him. Now one Queen was gone, her inquisitive demands for reports would not waste his time any longer. 

He studied the data his observant child had given him. Age 22, gender.. was indetermined. He had heard a more female voice but the video was showing a lanky human without the usual mammaries, face and hair hidden behind a black shawl.   
Not that it mattered. 

He had much to learn about his target. He would have a lot of fun with it. What made it tick. And then use this to make it suffer as much as it had tried to make him suffer. 

He would have to force out the operator and somehow stop their uncanny ability to disappear into their warframes.. Watching over the footage of his own fight, he remembered.. 

That tinsuit didn't just provoked him.. but there were the one, two sentences where that little git had called him hot. His mind lingered on these moments longer than he wanted to admit. 

He was a professional, he shouldn't be influenced by flattery. 

His list said that the Tenno had fought him a lot of times. 

Maybe they were unlucky and only got the wrong blueprints. Or maybe they were interested. He wondered, if offered, what restitution he would accept. 

Owning his own Tenno.. could be a useful tool. An insurance even, against losing favour. The Queen was not allowed to know of course. 

Tyl Regor decided, that he would not be opposed to working with a Tenno that had paid restitution, that had made an honest effort. 

That was loyal. If they even could be loyal. 

He had observed other battalions employ warframes in temporary alliances often enough, so it was a theoretical possibility. 

He would insist on something more stable. And he would never initially accept them as his equal.   
Not after what they had done. 

The tenno were attack-dogs, led by the Lotus.   
Maybe he would have one too.   
A man can dream, after all. 

An evil smile was playing around his lips. 

He would need to even the odds. No, even better, to get himself in an advantageous position, from which he would offer the tenno a way to redemption. Plugging into his work station, he pulled up his biomedical databases and began to search


	6. A short chapter In which our Tenno gets very sleepy >:3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sunder has been found.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Abduction, noncon medication  
> nothing naughty.  
> Next chapter will be.

Ending their chat with Onkko, Sunder yawned and stretched out. Their last fight capturing the Teralyst went reasonably well and so they wanted to get something for themselves, a gift for a job well done. 

Leaving Onkkos cave, they stood there for a moment, taking in the fresh air, marveling at the sunrise.  
Below them ostron traders were restocking their stands and small groups of Corpus and Grineer were meandering through the crowd, allowed in as long as they were respecting the non agression rule set by Konzu and Saya. 

The air was crisp and clear and the smell of bread and sizzling meat was reaching Sunders nostrils.  
Their stomach was growling loudly, so the decision to get something to eat before they were leaving the earth was easily taken. 

Sunder really needed some sleep. 

A few minutes later they were sitting on the plateau overlooking ostron bay, enjoying their food while trying to shush away the annoying insects which had obviously decided that Tenno blood or ostron cuisine was the ideal option for them too.  
Feeling a prick on their neck, they slapped away what they thought was a massive bloat fly, cursing about the ruined morning.  
"Ordis, get the lander, the insects won't let me eat in peace." 

They felt tired, but after the long night fighting eidolon, that really wasn't anything unusual, or so they thought. 

Sunder hadn't noticed the team of ostensibly tusk seekers who had been following them and whose cutter was, though holding distance, beelining their orbiter with a surprising certainty. 

Finishing their breakfast, Sunder almost didn't made it to their bed. "Dang ordis I'm beat, I'm going to sleep" they yawned, throwing their gloves on the floor.  
They wanted to undress fully, but just were too tired. Almost asleep, doubt crept up, grabbing their throat, their body was not just unnaturally tired but it started to feel numb. 

They wanted to fight against it, they tried to pinch their own cheeks hard to stay awake but no avail. 

They didn't slip into the dreamless void, they were pulled into it. 

They didn't hear the alarms trying to alert them to the intruders on their ship. Ordis attempt to seal their quarters and flush out the enemy failed and so, a group of three manics entered and left the orbiter, with them Sunder, in a deep, artificial sleep.


	7. In which our Tenno has to make a decision.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They meet again.  
> They want to take his offer, but then, someone steps in to save one who doesn't want to be saved

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Abduction, delicious humiliation, and a bit of impact play.
> 
> then life cockblocks our protagonists.  
> Angst, hurt.

Blackness..

Sunder tried to open their eyes, but no avail. Tiredness still all-encompassing, and a weird, tingling sensation was spanning their whole body.  
Every bit of their body felt like they had constricted every nerve and awoke to an unresponsive, numbish, tingling physis.  
Numb, not in control.  
and so tired. 

Sunder was just lying there, trying to remember what happened, the usual missions, they had caught a Teralyst, they had something to eat.. 

Then they went to lay down on the stylish though uncomfortable round "sofa" their orbiters private room contained. 

Something must have poisoned them.  
The panic set in, but all the adrenaline they could muster still didn't manage to break through the fog. 

Flickering lights tried to pierce the darkness, but they turned into blueish, reddish abstract forms, colours that danced before their eyes which only slowly reacted. 

Then, a laugh brought splinters of memories back, uncomfortably lodged below the surface. That laugh, they remembered that laugh. Unique.  
Tubemen.  
Manic.  
That knowledge hit, a jolt of energy & will forced Sunder to move their head, just a bit.  
They felt some pressure on their cheeks, on their teeth. But nothing more, just pressure. Was it a blindfold? A weapon? Hands? Hands. 

Sunders head moved, the pressure intensified.  
They recognised that, whatever had knocked them down, was at least not irreversible.. 

But they still were, obviously in deep shit.

Suddenly there was blinding light, painfully searing into their eyes, even through closed eyelids. 

The pressure around their mouth disappeared 

"Oh, you are awake." 

Him. This voice... nothing like it in the system..  
They knew where they were.  
Uranus.  
In the deep sea laboratories of Tyl Regor.  
...  
well fuck. 

"Tenno, Tenno, Tenno..  
I really took what you said to me to heart. I take it you won't find this boring or repetitive"  
With a deep chuckle, the voice continued  
"Not that I care" 

After a short fight, their eyelids finally listened and opened.  
Struggling to find focus, everything was hazy, the laboratory was bathed into a yellow light.  
Fighting to move their head, Sunder tried to look around..  
It seemed they were alone. 

Lying on the cold tiles like some crumpled and discarded clothing...  
Moving was incredibly tiring. 

Trying to lift their head.. they weren't even able to do this.. 

Tyl regor stood towering above them, his mask blank, the ocular sensors glowing.  
Bending down,  
Tyl took Sunders lower jaw into his massive hand, his thumb pressed into the Tennos cheek, intensely until they felt their body giving in, their mouth opening. Tyl, gripping, but not crushing moved their head around, like a puppet. 

Reflexively, Sunder closed their eyes, trying to just understand what the hell had happened. 

Whatever knocked them out had left them with a bad case of brain fog. 

Sunder could smell a mix of oil, leather and a faint bit of sweat from the massive hand that was directing their head movement as if they were a toy, turning their head from left to right, quite carefully.  
He could just end them, with a snap, break their neck with one swift movement. 

"How fragile you are. I could crush your little Maggot-head now and be celebrated. But that would be too easy. Too boring. We don't want boring, do we?" 

Slumped and crumpled, Sunder stared at Regors face, wishing for something to connect to. 

Regaining some sort of haptic feedback , they noticed drool running out of their mouth, over their chin and over his hand.  
They gulped, too late. 

Tyl looked at Sunders (tiny) head inside his own prank, chuckled, then moved his hand so the operatorsHead made the known movement for "No". 

Then he said, with an almost comical sounding voice  
"No, great Doctor Reegor, this Worm must be punished for its crimes of murder, sabotage and insolence"  
Spittle ran down their chin, onto his Hand. 

"You are a disgusting, dirty thing." He said, with a mix of disgust and malicious glee. Regor let go of their jaw just to wipe off his hand on their cheek. 

"I'd tell you to lick it clean but we both know that won't work now, you'd just make it worse " he chuckled.  
"A dirty little Maggot", he grabbed their face again. 

An intense sense of shame burned inside of their mind. They were quite literally unable to object, lying there, drooling like some dirty animal..

In the tiny room of their mind not preoccupied with shame, Sunder was wondering why he was so careful not to, well, crush their head like a ripe fruit. 

Closing their eyes to not having to see him, they felt their face getting hot and internally was quite thankful that Regors massive hand hid half of it. 

They tried to say anything, to answer, but their mouth felt like a mix of fur and that soft, squishy mass helminth is made of. 

"Oh, a reaction.. You look pathetic.. Do you like this, you little worm?" Tyl didn't sound angry, just amused & his little chuckle drove that heat straight through the Operators whole body. 

They did. 

"Oh, I forgot, its hard to answer while under the effects of my numbing paralytic. Let's change that." 

Regor walked out of sight, took something from somewhere, the Tenno just heard the clunking sounds of Regors legs and some small metallic cluttering sound. With a hiss, warmth began to spread from a tiny area of Sunders neck, with it, haptic input returned. The operator tried to sit up, but their body still struggled to follow instructions.  
Their arms felt like the soft wobbly tissue the ostron were harvesting from the unum.  
Unable to support their own weight, they gave. 

Sunders head avoided a painful collision with the floor only because Regor, squatting down beside them had grabbed their hair close at the root and carefully placed their head on the ground. 

Sunder looked up, fearful and at the same time, unable to pretend they weren't. 

"I don't like to repeat myself." 

Sunder nodded to the question that had been hanging between the two. 

They were enjoying this.  
Some sick, fucked up part of them enjoyed the situation they had found themselves in immensely. 

"Humhum.. How pathetic, the big and mighty Tenno lying to my feet.  
This is where you belong" 

Regor stood up and took a few steps back 

"You are a Maggot, sure,  
a Maggot that could jump into their Frame and run like a beaten Kubrow, but a Maggot nonetheless..

Come to me, Maggot.  
I want to punish you for what you did to me.  
Someone needs to give you what you deserve..." 

The operator looked confused at Tyl.. 

'Did he just tell me that I could transference into my warframe and leave?' 

Their thoughts were racing, What was happening?  
Were they free to leave?  
Did he actually leave it to them? 

"I'm waiting.." 

His deep voice shot straight through Sunders body, reminding them of their aching, consuming want. 

What should they do? They had a way out, but at the same time that treacherous horny asshole in them wanted this.  
So fucking bad.  
No way around it.  
They'd hate themselves if they would run now. 

Flushed with shame and desire they didn't notice their own body moving slowly, whilst they were still arguing with themselves inside their own head 

Using their hands, they tried to push themselves up, crawling slowly towards the imposing figure that seemed far and yet close. 

In their head, Sunders inner voice screamed at them to run, leave, or at least fight, while that one part of them just held out that they wanted this.  
They wanted this so much, they had never before experienced this wonderful, dirty disgusting want, nor found anyone who had seen it, them.  
who wanted too. 

A sharp stinging pain on their butt cut through the inner squabble.

Trying, but failing to suppress a reaction, the Tenno yelped in pain. A sharp line of fire ran over their behind and then tried to turn on their side.  
His paralytic obviously had stopped working, the pain was ebbing off but still..  
They wanted to touch the area Tyl had hit. 

"You will not" 

With a flash, one of Regors stilts pressed down between the operators shoulder blades, pinning them to the ground, without actually hurting them. That had been successfully accomplished by whatever Regor had hit them with. Maybe a whip?  
Sunder couldn't see, body pressed against the floor..  
"Hands on your back" They followed without actually thinking.  
The pressure between their shoulders disappeared, but now his hand was holding their arms like an iron clamp.  
They could not move, any attempt to turn applied painful pressure onto their shoulders.  
Closing their eyes, gritting teeth, their hot face pressed against the cold floor  
they only could listen to the sound that was prefacing pain and try to not yelp every time pain was blooming on their back, thighs and ass. 

Whatever he was hitting Sunder with, it stung like hell.  
Hissing, yelping, instinctively tried to move away but no avail. 

Breathing through bared teeth, they let go, met the pain and, unable to do anything, let it wash over them. 

Then it stopped. Their ass and legs felt like they were on fire, heat radiating outwards.  
In between the fiery pain there was hunger, their stomach in knots, whole body shivering they ground themselves against the floor. 

What was wrong with them?  
This thought would not leave them. 

Why hadn't they used their void powers to shift. What the fuck was wrong with them? 

They pressed their thighs together, this alone.. why did this feel so good? 

What the fuck was wrong with them, why did this beating made them want even more? 

"Maggots don't have arms. Understood?" 

Head resting on the floor, flush, hot cheeks against the cool surface, Sunder nodded, while breathing heavily.  
There was a knot inside their gut, their pulse was racing and they felt.. desire.  
What the everloving fuck was wrong with them that a beating got them wet? 

They tried to burrow their head into the ground but there was nowhere they could hide. It was in them. What they feared. What they desired. 

With a sharp draft, Regor zipped back to his old position. 

"Now, little Maggot, you got taste.  
Come to me like the worthless Maggot you are or jump back into your tinsuit and run away. Your choice..." 

Tyl sounded...  
different, his Voice almost raspy. 

"Your ass will be dealing with the consequences" 

Sunder felt.. weird, like they never felt before. The tingling feeling of the paralytic had subsided, changed substituted by something raw. 

Their whole back side burned even more, a stinging singsong of small little needles but it still was less intense than the sweet mix of shame, excitement and want, that boiled inside their mind, heart and.. 

Sunder closed their eyes, inhaled deep,  
and with a thick voice, and still a little bit slurred, asked 

"Did you tell me that I could transference my Frame & leave?" 

Tyl tilted his head.

"Oh, Maggot you must have been very succeptive to my little sleep dart.  
Your ears or your little Maggot brain must be quite sleepy...

Let me put this here in very clear terms. Then you can decide. yes?" 

Looking up, Sunder nodded. 

"I am a scientist, a killer, a grineer, a father. a man.  
You pretty clearly told me that you find something attractive in me.

  
You know, Tenno I had a thought.  
In my scientific clarity I had to admit that what you said has hit me.  
I'm pretty sure you wanted to make me angry, yes?"  
Sunder bit their lip, had to admit that he was right. They nodded.

"It is true. We do the dance, you kill my children, you kill my body and steal my data and sometimes, when I beat your tinsuit, I can cut in the bits I managed to cut off from the frame that you leave when you let go.  
It is boring. 

This here (they were hearing a dirty grin, hidden by Regors blank, emotionless helmet) is at least something different. 

I know who you are.  
What you are.  
Void demon. Betrayer. 

A little dirty dog owned by the Lotus. 

That doesn't have to matter."

Regor looked down, at the body lying at his feet, breathing heavily, dishevelled.  
The sound it made, how it reacted to pain. 

He had to admit he enjoyed this. 

He continued 

I am a killer. A bastard. But not that kinda bastard.  
My children have brought a frame here.  
Without weapons and I took the liberty of using one of Vors invention as an insurance for you to not hurt my men should you decide to run like the Maggot you are. 

I will not hold you here against your will.  
That's not my style. 

I'd prefer to own you by your choice. 

To have you beg me to have you useless Tenno for me to use as I wish"  
He chuckled 

"But if you don't want, I'll just hurt you the regular way." 

Then his tone changed. 

"If you ever dare to return" 

The last sentence..  
cold and restrained 

Regor had walked near a massive crate. Sunder sat up to look at it, hissing a bit when their body weight pressed onto their raw backside. 

They could see a fully built Equinox standing inside the crate. No weapon, but the operator noticed an Ascaris negator stuck in the right leg of the warframe. 

"It will detach once you leave the perimeter.  
So yes, you can leave. But if you do, this will have been it.. 

The next time you come here armed, I will have to regard you as an enemy  
Do you understand? 

He looked at them, almost as if this had been something that had opened himself up.  
They both wanted this. 

Sunders mind was racing. This was everything they dreamed for, yearned for, to be taken by this man, be his, to lose themselves in their arms and to become his.. 

This massive gamble, would it be worth it?  
They knew why they're hesitating.  
Sure, everything in them wanted this so badly,  
but they were Tenno, supposed to bring balance, not just follow an(admittedly fucking hot) man because he made them so wet they would need to swap out the lower part of their transference suit or someone could go for a swim. 

"I'm still waiting.." 

Inside their ear they suddenly heard the Lotus.

Everything stopped 

Her image flashed up on Sunders field of view. 

"Ohohoh, I didn't think the Lotus would care for her Lizards" 

Regors mannerisms changed. "You wasting your time, liar" 

Without acknowledging the Grineer, the Lotus shouted at Sunder.  
"What are you doing? Are you poisoned? Why aren't you inside your Warframe?" 

Not really waiting for Sunders answer, the Lotus continued: 

"We are calculating your position and..  
"cut the connection Ordis!" Sunder shouted inside their mind. 

_"I can't do this operator"_

Sunder stared to the ground, balling their hands to fists. 

The Lotus feed opened up 

"Operator, we have your position, we are sending a rescue team" 

"Ordis please", they hadn't noticed that they had been audible. 

Regor looked at the Operator, keenly observing the inner turmoil. 

"My child, please answer, are you hurt?"  
_"Operator you have to leave this place"_  
They could not.. 

"I'M SORRY"

Sunder held their hands before their face, fought hard to silence a sob, then forced out 

"Ordis, cut the the feed I, please! Please!  
_"Understood."_

Everything was silent, but the chaos inside the operator was unbroken, there was so much chaos in their mind, that it made their body tingly and a bit sluggish.. 

What if anyone had listened? Knew their fucked up sick desires? Had seen them almost give themselves to a Grineer..  
They still..  
They still..  
wanted to stay. 

Sunder the traitor.  
Cut out from Tenno, hunted like the few Tenno defectors Sunder had heard from, who had found their happiness elsewhere.

Ordis appeared again, now in an open feed.  
Every Grineer in the lab would hear it.  
Sunder felt a calm take hold of them. 

_"The lotus sent a team. They will be here in 35 minutes."_  
He switched to the private connection.  
_"I thought that the Operator would want you both to know this "_

"Go. Or fight them" 

Regors voice cut through the chaos..  
Still it beat against the walls of their mind, like angry ghouls, clawing in. 

"Im sorry I'm so so sorry but I have to leave..  
They felt their body betraying them, tears welling up.  
" The lotus sent me a rescue team and I.. I can't..  
I can't just"  
Cursing themselves, their stupid head that couldn't find the right words, their stupid tongue, the operator looked up.. 

"I'm so sorry, I have to go. I can't fight my family."  
Tears made their field of view dissolve into a hazy veil.. 

"She will never love you as much as I can love my children" 

Sunder stared on the floor, blinking heavily to maybe not start crying.. 

His voice turned colder. 

"I won't fault you for my own miscalculations.  
I won't fault you for being the betrayers." 

Regor turned away, stepped to a terminal and began loading data upon a cube still speaking into the growing, cold, silent space in between them. Somewhere water was dripping. 

"Go and never come back unless you want me to be the one to end your worthless Tenno life.." 

That bitter sound ripped right through them..  
He had spt the words into the cold air. 

They ey just wanted to stay..  
but  
They could not attack their siblings..  
They could not hurt the only family left to them, the person who had taken them in.  
The one person, maybe the only one, who hadn't seen them as a tool, a weapon, a mistake, a thing, an abberation, but children. 

Sunder finally gave up fighting back the tears and started sobbing. 

"GO OR DO I HAVE TO MAKE YOU?!" 

The words hung in the ever growing space between them. 

Biting on the insides of their cheek, Sunder activated transference and blinked into their new frame. 

Entering into Equinox dulled their own emotions, but it still wouldn't take the sting of Regors words, or rather from its meaning. 

"I don't fault a Kuaka for shitting where it eats, I should have expected your choice."  
Tyls mask stared coldly at Equinox,  
the tenno inside it grit their teeth together and couldn't look at regor, wouldn't look, just to not start crying again.. 

Now both hidden between the cold empty masks they wore, Sunder heard Tyl say the words that hurt more than any beating could. 

"She doesn't love you, Tenno.." 

How true these words would be, Sunder would learn soon enough. 

"She sent a team to save me. I can't..  
" Don't try to justify. You made your decision, Sunder . LEAVE " 

His feed cut. 

Equinox ran and vaulted out of the laboratory. 

What had they been thinking? That they could just leave their second mother?  
For what, for lower urges like some dirty kubrow? 

No matter how true it felt, how much it touched something they knew they wouldn't be able to burrow with heaps of repression and shame..  
They knew someone who would not let them get away with it.. 

The waves rushing, blending out all sounds but their own crying, wailing sobs.  
Heard by no one but Ordis and the lidless eye.. 

After a short time, Sunder had managed to control themselves enough to speak without fighting themselves for air.  
They didn't care about how they looked to the Lotus 

"Ordis...  
Please tell the lotus I'm safe. Tell her to.. to call back the crew, that I fled on my own" 

They were still trying to suppress their own emotions.

 _"Done, Operator, although I can not guarantee that she will be receptive **to your stupidit.**_  
Ordis cracked voice reverted back.  
_"Ordis apologizes for its faulty precepts"_

"No, no you're right Ordis, I was dumb. I was weak. 

Entering the round platform, the Negator fell off Equinox leg.  
They bent down and took it. 

"Call the landing craft for extraction"


	8. Remember, Regret, Return

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Tenno never learned healthy coping.
> 
> After Sunder has fled, the Sacrifice happens, so spoiler warning for everything leading up to and including The sacrifice and chimaera prologue.  
> After that Sunder gives up on space mom.  
> Ordis is a nice loving cephalon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW!!!  
> Bad Bad bad coping, attempted Si,  
> Alcohol abuse,  
> thinking about suicide. Sunder being a miserable pile of self pity.  
> (bit in the part between  
> __!!! __ and ___¡¡¡____) 
> 
> The beginning describes the markings Sunder received and what they mean to them.

* * *

With a fingertip they followed the signs that their meeting had drawn, deep into their skin.

Welts in blue, red and purple  
delineations..  
A sign of meeting someone whose desires made them into complementary spirits.

The first, wonderful time.

Closing their eyes, hands wandering over thighs and backside.  
Remembering, they applied pressure and were given a small delicious bit of pain.

Real..

Inscribed in their own flesh, wordless writing about a want uncovered,

Red, violet green blue yellow clouds blooming over time, disappearing.  
Tactile sensation of lines in the self, soft skin, hardened words who would be disappearing..  
But for now they were here.  
They were real.

Unlike mere memories that coalesced into a hazy fog of gunfire, of malformed bodies screaming and throwing themselves at their Warframe, of deaths in endless halls and neon lit corridors and caves  
formed of undulating flesh.

Unlike everything that had ever happened to them in battle,  
blade dancing, electrocuted, shot and stabbed and poisoned by thousand toxins.  
All had unquestionably happened.  
But they never felt real.  
Experiences that never had left anything but a muddied memory

Unlike this.

Unlike the fine dark stripes, doubly underelining his message on their physical body.

Unlike merely feeling real, but a feeling that left nothing. No signs, no markings, no scars, not even memories for long.

Unlike all those missions and battles..

This was real.

Their body, betrayer, lover and killer, it bore the markings, their own touch recalling memories.

Slowly wandering over sore skin, embossed an answer to the question never spoken.

They smiled.  
They felt gifted.  
No one would be able to take this away.

Even after time would have healed the bruises, hidden the signs, unmade the waysigns towards their dirty little bliss,  
they still had the knowledge  
that this had been real.

Memories of something that Sunder had barely managed to admit to themselves.

No wet dream,  
sweating, diving between Saturn's rings,  
eyes fluttering below undulating void tendrils,  
slick fingers, heavy panting, waking up with more yearning, dishevelled and hungry.

This was real.

Standing in front of the mirror they always expected their voidself to make an appearance.

But their mirror staid silent.  
Their ship was empty.  
Pets in deep cryo.  
No mocking, no needling comments.

Maybe their voidself was silent, because here, now, for this one side of themselves

they were at peace with it.

Not with their decision to run.  
Just with accepting that they had enjoyed every word, every laugh, every mocking gesture, every second at his feet.  
Every. Hit.

And they had something to prove themselves that it had happened.  
Not a dream, not by proxy.  
to them.

But now that they had tried that delicious fruit of the forbidden garden, that addictive feeling that is  
feeling relief,  
having a wish fulfilled,  
having a hunger nourished,  
a thirst sated.

It would not not go away.

They had been given bliss and had given it away.

They wanted more.

* * *

Over days and weeks,  
The flesh had healed and the memories started to fade but the hunger stayed.  
They knew..  
they wanted more.

They had lost, no, had given away what they were longing for.

That's so much worse

You can't miss what you don't know but  
now they knew and they missed

Free from voidself mockery Sunder supplanted their own anger.

Cursing their own weakness, to give into the Lotus, they had found something to pretend, to explain why they did not want a healer to look at their "injuries"

They had decided they would not be able to remember in case anyone dared to question, trying to pierce that irradiated shell.

Weeks later, the few people they met in the missions they did for the Syndicates still were treating Sunder like some hurt, mewling pobber.  
(The self pity was hard to overlook)

Time crept forward.

Sunder felt themselves unable to stop resenting the Lotus for "saving them"  
How should she have known that nobody had needed saving.

The number of defector Tenjo were tiny.

Some had thrown their lot with the Corpus, Nef Anyo, Alad, Ergo even..  
clever ones surely had appreciated an offer of true loyalty...

Sunder knew there had been murmurs of someone defecting to Tyl before but they were forgotten. Names erased in whatever little archives the Tenno had.  
Whispered nicknames behind hidden doors.

No punishment for talking about them but losing favour,  
which effectively meant:  
Losing good opportunities for missions.  
Or alerts that suddenly were 'lost in transmission', leaving the people to be punished short on supplies.  
Allies growing colder, Contacts being suddenly unreachable for a while.  
Nothing explicit. Still very real.

Losing a mother's love can be the worst punishment for those who have lost their parents. Every Tenno shared this pain, this collective trauma.  
It made them into the Tenno they were.

Thus, names were only whispered, initials, in hushed whisperd.. A, N..E  
Would Sunder now enter these forgotten shades, the erased, unacknowledged, 'shouldn't have thawed those up' Tenno?

This was the question that the Operator was occupied by. That toiled their mind while they slashed through Infested, cut open the Corpus, shot the Grineer into tiny pieces.

Avoiding the sea.

Then.

The past broke into the lives of any being touched by Natah.

Ballas took the Lotus.

Ballas didn't just take the Lotus, but he ripped open the thin wall that had caged Natah in her own second dream.

Sentients  
The World builders..  
World killers  
shaped by orokin hate.  
Shaped by orokin.

The past broke and pulled away the little space in which Sunder was standing, occupied by their little dirty private problems.

Ballas gangly arms ripped away the last lie.

She had never been human. Orokin

Unlike Sunder parents, whose animalistic inhumanity had fought itself out of their bodies, had driven distorted, disjointed shards of hate through the skin and bones of people who once were human..  
Unlike the victims of the Zariman whose poisoned hunger clawed down delineations held open by the big regrets over the decisions that made up adulthood..

The Lotus was never human.

Still she was, like everyone, defined by emotions, memories, decisions and the physical.

So little was enough to break that growing mass of regret free.. So it could search for the reason for all the for the paths not taken.  
Find it. The reason for regret and ugly pain.

To destroy it.

To destroy them.

Sunder had given up something they had yearned for...  
How would they not become bitter?  
Having given up something major..  
For someone who discarded its human relationships with its human form like one who had been desperate to cut off a deadened, fetid rotten limb.

* * *

___________________!!!___________________

* * *

Sunder thought about dying.  
What else was there?

Left by one who had given up pretending to love, had thrown them away.

And by one void poisoned, driven by tainted memories unable to forget all the sacrifices made whilst losing the ability to love.  
They all were poisoned by regret.

"She never loved you"

Oh how right he had been..

Crying hadn't filled that ravenous maw of regret.  
The helminth didn't want to eat them either.

What was there?  
They felt incredibly alone.

More to themselves than to Ordis, they bitterly asked :

"What does it tell you if every single person who is bound to you, who had been _your Mother_ discards you?"

He had no answer.

"Who but myself can be that disruption that destroys everything around me?

Something in me must be just rotten and I can't stop giving it to anyone I dare to care for, making them leave me for their own sake?"

Ordis was silent.

Even their cephalon was not able, or Sunder thought willing,  
to dissuade that hateful core inside of them that decided that the only thing Sunder was willing to acknowledge as responsible for everything bad was Sunder. The one who emerged from her body.  
The one massive part of themselves that she had tried to suppress and failed.

Sunder wished they had staid on the Zariman.  
Hadn't been pulled away.  
Had died with Mommy.

Crying didn't help.

Drinking didn't help for long and they cursed their void gift every time they tried  
and failed  
to hurt themselves.

It always was the same, the tiny nicks their body tolerated,  
but when they tried to slash, their own body was saving them.  
It felt like another betrayal...

They decided only way possible was to stop eating but not to stop drinking.  
No way that asshole void gift could save them from that..  
A toxic triumph.

They let go.. After gaining the paracesis from the bumbling misshapen fool that looked like Sunder felt, they ordered the cheapest grineer schnapps and ran headlong into self destruction.

That was when Ordis could not bear it any longer.

Being forced to see that pitiful creature fall asleep atop a mountain of stinking rancid floofs, soaked with the results of drinking cheapest Grineer Fusel, cheap alcohol, moonshine like, regurgitated in their poison induced sleep...  
Ordis was for once very happy with his lack of olfactory sensors as what wafted from Sunder private Quarters months after the fateful meeting, could easily described as 'A smell that would sicken even the infested'

* * *

_______________¡¡¡__________

* * *

Ordis could not bear it any longer. The self pity, self hate, self destruction. 

Ordis alone flew the lander to Uranus.

And recalled the messages Sunder had listened to intently for months.

It halled through the lander and was answered by weeping.

  
"Why are you doing this to me Ordis?"

_"Operator. please, Ordis can't bear to see you act this way. Please...Ordis does not know what else to do."_

Wiping their face with a condroc floof, they fought the urge to ball together and cry more.

They sat up. Wondering if they would feel any signs of physical dependency they took the half full jug of cheapest alcohol and emptied it into the recycling unit.  
Self destruction was tiring.

Would their body let them get away with this?

Fighting down bile, they went to the shower and looked into the mirror. bloodshot eyes, tired, skin even more sickly pallid, cold stinky sweat

"You look like trash" Sunders mirror spoke to them.

"You too" they answered.  
Now that asshole was popping up..

"You know I don't want you dead, right?" 

Sunders mirrorself didn't grin, as one might expect. It just looked at the miserable pile of human, waiting for the answer.

"No I don't know. I don't even know who or what you are, how in the world should I know what the fuck you want?"  
Sunder stared back, tired.

"Oh kiddo, my kiddo"

Sunder shouted back, hit by this word, by the intrusion it signified

"Stop using this word, you aren't my dad. He's dead and I am really really **really** not in the mood to reminisce about another one I lost!"

Sunder bared gritted teeth, dull and dirty and angry while balling their hands into tiny, angry fists.

Then, their voidself spoke.  
Not what.  
how.

It used **his** words 

It used his voice.

Sunder felt hit, like woken from a deep slumber, ripped out by an icy shower.

"Go and never come back unless you want me to be the one to end your worthless Tenno life."

Their mirror bastard smiled, an eyebrow raised. 

as if asking

'What are you waiting for?' 

"You don't have to thank me".. and it was gone, with a chuckle.

So be it.

They had fought for a lie.

They were willing to die for a someone that they had chosen.

(Of course they hoped, now, after taking the decision that whatever would happen wouldn't end with their death, but something more fun.  
Dying is neither fun nor romantic.)

They entered the shower, sat down and just were.   
Soaking in the warmth of the falling water, they felt comfortable for the first time since that fateful day.

They decided for a change of look. Hair. 

For some reason they never questioned, their transference throne had the ability to change their haircut and even their physical appearance..

Maybe they were not human, but beings of pure void, given form by the memories of every child who entered the void on this fateful day, aeons ago..  
Well, it didn't matter.

They selected a practical haircut, buzzed short everywhere but the top. It felt unusual. 

Changing into their first transference suit, it felt soothing onto their skin. Tiny nanolines directing every tiny change of electric charge that was thought and movement into the warframe, while protecting the wearer from the weather. 

  
Teeth brushed and cleaned they finally weren't looking like the bag of shit they felt.

Time had healed their marks..  
Well, daring to hope was free and if he would kill them, the hope would be their last.  
They allowed it.

Small graces were graces nonetheless.   
Whatever would happen, they would accept it.

_Ordis asks the operator to please visit a doctor, Ordis did not find any information about the long term effects of alcohol poisoning on Tenno._

"Oh ordis.. You know, should I experience any signs of withdrawal, a guy who can repair massive genetic decay should be knowledgeable enough to know how to deal with that. Really, you can't do genetics without knowing about biochemistry..

But.   
I appreciate your concern.

Taking away all but the melee weapon from Nezha, their Frame of choice,  
the operator draped their umbra shawl around their face and moved to the bridge.

Kneeling at the navigation console, the Tenno asked Ordis to send their ID signal to every station on the planet and to add something.

They were returning and they would not fight.

Waiting for Ordis to protest, his silence touched Sunder.

A mumbled "Thank you" crept from the Operator into the calm landing craft.

_"Operator, Ordis just received coordinates.  
Sending confirmation..."_

After a pause, the cephalon added:

_"Ordis is.. thankful he was allowed to be your companion."_

"Ordis please, I'm not dead.."

They added yet inside their head only.  
A tiny yet.

They hoped.

The lander wove through deep fog and the endless salty, lightly sulfuric rain that defined this layer of Uranus.

Light cut through the clouds, leading the way to Grineer cutters that delivered something to the massive sprawling submarine complex.

Ducking under the massive ship, the lander navigated to a complex that, judging its missing guidelight, should be inactive.

The lander hovered maybe 1,5 m over the landing platform.  
Opening a different door, installed so the operator could enter the lander when not inside their warframe, Nezha and the operator looked down onto the wet landing platform.

Touching Nezha on the shoulder to ease transference, Sunder made him lift them into his arms.

They held tight.  
Nezha jumped out of the small craft and easily and elegantly landed on his feet.

Carrying them, Nezha walked towards the massive heavy door of the complex.

It opened.

Slowly, they entered the giant maw that was shrouded in darkness, led only by tiny red evacuation lights that pulsed forward, downward.  
To him.


End file.
